Suckers

by J. A.

  While I can’t admit to being in the peak of physical condition (I get winded tying my shoes, which I can’t see unless I suck in my gut), I’ve got a spring-loaded pelvis and can crack walnuts with my butt cheeks. In fact, I’ve done the walnut thing on a bet before. Watching the guy eat them afterwards was priceless.

  That said, I was in good form when the Olympic Copulation began. I’m not quite porn star material, but what I lack in size I make up for in speed.

  I figured out early on that not much was required from me in the reciprocation department.

  Everyone wanted a Bit-O-Harry, and I was happy to oblige. I just laid back, closed my eyes, and let the ladies take what they wanted.

  There was a bad moment, when I felt someone with a mustache kissing me, but it turned out not to be a mustache.

  Yes, there was sucking. And groping. And fondling. And pulling. And thrusting. And lots of other ing words. And by the time it was finally over, I had to admit that it was indeed the greatest thirty seconds of my life.

  "That’s enough, baby." I forced back an overzealous Harry fan. "No use trying to prime a dry pump."

  I disentangled my legs, pulled my fingers out from wherever they’d been, and shoved away some tattooed vixen writhing on the floor, because she was writhing on my pants.

  "Any of you ladies know where the back door is?"

  I slapped away an intrusive hand.

  "Not that one. The exit."

  "Aren’t you enjoying yourself, Mr. McGlade?"

  It was Vlad. He’d taken off the Hefty Bag ensemble, and stood naked in the doorway. The last time I’d seen anything that small, it was stuck in a hors d'oeuvre.

  "I’m having a blast, Vladdy old boy. But all good things must end, and frankly, you’re all a bunch of psycho freaks. So I’m afraid that— Jesus!"

  The vixen nearest to me had sunk her bridgework into my ankle, and it hurt like...well...getting bitten on the ankle.

  I pulled back, then felt a similar pain on my left hand. And then on my right arm. I kicked away my attackers and limped over to an empty corner of the room to finish pulling up my pants.

  "Blood is the elixir of life, Mr. McGlade."

  Vlad bared his own fangs, and I noticed Little Vlad waking up to see what all the excitement was about. Even turgid, it was more appropriate for picking locks than satisfying the ladies.

  "You’ve got a real tiny rodney there, Vlad. No wonder you’re a power-mad sadist. The shrinkological term is 'overcompensation'."

  Vlad squeaked his squeaky squeak-laugh.

  "You’re to be the ultimate sacrifice, Mr. McGlade. We’re going to eat you alive, then deliver your corpse to the president of the network."

  "I’ve met him. He’d prefer tranny hookers."

  I zipped up and glanced around the room. Naked, drooling vampires were closing in from all directions. There were at least a dozen. The only door to the room was the one Vlad stood in front of. The wall behind me felt solid, final.

  "They didn’t listen to our letter writing campaign," Vlad whined. "Or our Internet petition.

  So maybe your drained, lifeless corpse will show them we aren’t fooling around."

  I raised an eyebrow.

  "What the hell are you talking about, dinky?"

  " Fatal Autonomy. We want it back on the air."

  I had enough bravado left to fake a belly laugh.

  "You’ve got to be kidding! You lured me here, humped me dry, and now want to kill me, all to get my show renewed?"

  Vlad got a crazy look in his eye. Well, a more crazy look.

  "The whole warren loved the show. We watched it every Thursday night." His voice became school-teachery. "What is your favorite TV show, children?"

  " Fatal Autonomy," they droned in unison.

  I pinched myself. I’d had this dream before. Usually, though, there were a few recognizable actresses in the orgy pile. Like the chicks from Friends. Or the Golden Girls. And no fat naked vampire guy who was hung like a Smurf.

  "Look, Vlad, we’re all upset when our favorite shows get cancelled. I had to see a therapist for a while after Xena ended. But killing me won’t..."

  "We have a script," Vlad said. I half expected him to pull a sheaf of papers out of his ass and show me. "It’s called Fatal Autonomy, The Rise of the Vlad Pires. "

  Everyone thinks they’re a writer.

  "In the script, do you have a bigger Johnson?"

  "Get your jokes in now, Mr. McGlade. When your body is found, the media frenzy will ignite a resurgence of interest in your series. The public will demand to know what really happened to Harry McGlade. And next season, they’ll find out—in the first half of a two-parter."

  "You’re crazy. Television doesn’t work like that."

  Actually, it kinda did. But I didn’t want to encourage the fruit loop.

  "Children of the night... ATTACK!"

  Even though they’d sexed me up, I’d had enough of Vlad and the Snuggle Bunch. Two Pires with lunging fangs got a Moe-style head-crunch, which sounded more like a dull thud than two coconuts hitting. I planted a heel onto the nose of a some nude skinny guy, drilled an elbow into the cheek of a chick who moments ago was making me sing soprano, and then sprinted right at Vlad, stepping on legs and spines and necks, and giving him a swift kick in the peanuts.

  Vlad cradled his delicates like a child holding two raisins and a bran flake, and I pushed past and ran into Crazy Chainsaw Goon, just as he was yanking the cord.

  I couldn’t hear my screams above the roar of the saw, but I could guess they oozed machismo and self-confidence. I took a quick left through a doorway, another left down a hall, yanked open another door, and flew into a room filled with Vlad and a dozen angry, naked vampires.

  I hugged my knees and Crazy Chainsaw Goon toppled over me, falling face first onto his appliance. He must have pinned down his trigger finger, because the saw revved and came up through his shoulder blades like a shark fin, misting me with blood.

  I pushed backwards, bare feet sliding in the gore, and scrambled back down the hall with a flock of Pires on my heels.

  Which is where I met up with Crazy Knife Goon and his Swiss Army Buffalo Skinner.

  He slashed. I ducked. But I didn’t duck far enough, and the blade dinged off my scalp. The pain was painful. I fell onto my butt, and he raised the blade for the coup de grace.

  "Hold on!" I said, showing him my palm.

  He paused, holding the striking position. I pressed my free hand to my head.

  "Look what you did. You really hurt me, you idiot."

  Knife Goon shifted from one foot to the other. "I...uh..."

  "Don’t just stand there. Get me a bandage or something. Jesus, I’m gonna need stitches."

  "Sorry," he mumbled, lowering the knife and turning around.

  I planted both my hands on his lower back (okay, it was his ass, but this was special circumstances—I’m 100% all man, baby) and pushed as hard as I could.

  He teetered forward, and I scuttled past and made it to my feet, through a door, down a hall, and into the room where Vlad and all the naked vampires were.

  Two of them grabbed my legs, sinking their pointy dentures into my knees. Knees are harder than tooth enamel, and I won that encounter, though one incisor wedged itself deep enough into my kneecap to bring macho, manly tears to my eyes.

  Another Pire, of the naked male variety, straddled me and put me in a choke hold, which I didn’t appreciate because a) I hate being choked and 2) his naked maleness was flapping in my face.

  I buried inhibition and played cherry picker, not actually pulling the fruit from the tree but squeezing hard enough to feel pits. I tugged him aside, and then a blast shook the room and two Pires flopped on top of me, victims of Vlad’s shotgun.

  "Enough of this!" he thundered. "It ends now!"

  I pulled the nearest corpse over my head as the shotgun boomed again, her back taking the worst of it, but—son of a bitch—I still caught a few pellets. It sucked.

&
nbsp; Pires were screaming now, running this way and that way, and I crawled through the chaos and snuck past Vlad right into Crazy Knife Goon.

  Which proved my theory that God did, indeed, want me dead.

  The blade came down in a long, sweeping arc. I tried to twist to the side, and it shaved a bacon-sized piece of skin off my biceps.

  He raised the knife again, I wondered what hell would be like and if they gave you time off for sucking up, and then his chest became instant Spaghetti-Os to coincide the another shotgun blast from Vlad.

  Crazy Knife Goon folded like a lawn chair, his knife falling from his hand and landing, point-first, between my toes, where it stuck in the floor with a thwak.

  Someone grabbed my ankle, but I had enough adrenaline in my system to kill a mastadon, and I pulled free and sprinted down the hall and tried to remember if I should go left or right so I went right and then another right and then I pulled open the door and there was Vlad with the shotgun.

  Apparently this house only had one goddamn room in it.

  I ducked. He fired. The drywall lost. When he racked another cartridge in I managed to find another door and even though I fully expected him to be behind this one as well I tugged it open and slammed it shut behind me.

  The room was pitch black, and I was breathing like a locomotive, but I swear I heard feminine giggling.

  Chapter 7

  Andrew

  "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Hee hee! Ow!" I said, as the ladies clawed and bit into my arms, legs, torso, and an extremely ticklish spot under my right knee.

  " Zesty, tangy blood... "

  You wouldn't expect chained-up elderly women to be so freakin' strong. For the first few moments I wasn't fighting back as hard as I could, simply because it still felt like I was engaged in combat with my grandma, but once the biting and clawing started to really hurt I punched and kicked with no regard to brittle bones or fragile dentures.

  I couldn't get away. I kept straining to get out of chain-range so I could at least cower in a corner, but there was simply no escape from these women. They'd been slurping steroid-laden blood or something.

  They were in no hurry to kill me. Though I tried to protect my throat, it was unnecessary—

  they obviously planned to eat me alive, one tiny bite at a time.

  I was definitely bleeding in several different places.

  " Foamy, frothy blood... "

  Was my blood really foamy and frothy? Or had they just run out of good adjectives?

  I couldn't believe that I was going to die from being slowly eaten alive by chained-up elderly ladies who thought they were vampires. I'd always kind of figured that I would go peacefully in my sleep, after my wife dropped an anvil on my head.

  One of the ladies bit my arm hard. This one actually took some flesh with it. I screamed.

  (Not that I hadn't been screaming before, but I screamed a little louder at that one.) They both stopped biting me at the sound of the shotgun.

  The three of us listened.

  Chaos outside.

  Hopefully it was good chaos. Maybe the cops had burst in to save the day. They'd blow away Vlad and his goons, and— oops, sorry, we bad—accidentally shoot down McGlade in the crossfire. He'd lay on the floor, blood seeping from the hundred and seventy-eight bullet holes in his chest, wondering why he'd been such a loathsome prick.

  I could imagine his eulogy: "Fucker's dead. Throw some dirt on him. Let's go play some poker."

  More shotgun blasts. More chaos.

  It occurred to me that I should be trying to use the distraction as a tool for escape, rather than fantasizing about Harry McGlade's tragic demise.

  I fantasized about it a little bit more, just because it was so pleasant, and then sprung to my feet.

  Since my legs were all bitten-up, I promptly dropped back down to the floor. Falling on my legs hurt about as much as getting them bit in the first place.

  One of the ladies dove at me. I threw an instinctive punch. It was not a mighty punch, but the momentum of her face moving toward my fist, combined with the momentum of my fist moving toward her face, combined with the fact that I got her right in the middle of the nose, made for one splattery smack. I couldn't quite see the results, but I could feel them on my knuckles.

  She let out a howl and began to flail around on the floor. Positive descriptions of my blood's flavor and consistency were replaced by barely coherent, profanity-laden cries of rage and pain.

  I couldn't quite tell what the other woman was doing, but I hoped that her partner's wails were keeping her attention. I scurried away from there, yelping as a clawed hand grab my ankle.

  I slammed my other foot into the hand. The crack sounded like it hurt.

  I scrambled to the other end of the room, hoping I was out of chain-range. In theory, if the Vlad's administrative assistants had thrown me into the "Pit" with the intention of letting these women devour me, it wouldn't make a hell of a lot of sense for their chains not to give them total access to anywhere in the room.

  After pausing to pluck part of a fingernail out of my ankle, I stood up and pressed myself into the corner. Okay, there had to be a way out of this little pickle. If I ran across the room at top speed (ably avoiding the women with my astounding dexterity) and bashed into the door, I'd either break open the door or the left half of my body. Or maybe both, in which case I could at least drag my mangled frame to safety.

  I kind of wished that the woman would stop wailing. It was distracting me from figuring out whether the potential mangling was worth it.

  The woman stopped wailing.

  Much better.

  Then she started giggling, which was less noisy but a lot more unnerving. The other woman giggled with her. I, myself, did not giggle.

  I decided that the risk of shattering eighty-three bones was probably worth it.

  Another shotgun blast. Much closer than the others.

  The door flew open and I got a refreshing glimpse of light as Harry burst into the Pit. He slammed the door behind him, casting us back into darkness.

  "Okay, who's doing the giggling?" he asked.

  "Harry, I'm in here with you," I said.

  "That you, Maypole?"

  I was in the mood to be around pretty much any human being in the world but Harry McGlade at this point. "Are you trying to be funny when you screw up my name, or are you just an idiot?"

  "Oh, I was talking to some other guy named Maypole. I guess he's not here anymore."

  "Idiot."

  "Are we in the pit?"

  "Yeah."

  "Pretty shallow pit."

  "I know. How bad are things out there?"

  "Oh, things suck out there. Suck bad."

  "They suck in here, too."

  "Figures. At least we— crap, something's got my leg!"

  I could hear a struggle, and then a nice loud thump that sounded an awful lot like an incompetent private investigator being pulled to the floor by a chained-up carnivorous old lady.

  "Get off me, you toothy bitch!"

  I rushed forward to help him. If Harry "Obnoxious Prick" McGlade was going to die, I at least wanted it to be in a room with enough light that I could watch.

  The door opened again, and Vlad stepped inside, holding a shotgun. The ladies immediately released Harry and ran to opposite sides of the room, hiding their faces and cowering.

  It's easy to be intimidated by a very large man with a shotgun. It's a bit harder when the large man is naked and possesses male equipment that, immature as it may be, can only be described as a wee-wee.

  Harry stood up. "You can kill me if you want," he told Vlad, "but then I'll take the secret combination with me."

  Vlad’s face went from crazily angry to crazily confused. "What secret combination?"

  "If you kill me, you'll never know. I'll take it to my grave. I'll tell you this much, though: The first number is 14. The first digit of the second number is 8, but that's all you're going to get out of me for now. Interested?"

&
nbsp; "No."

  "What if I told you that diamonds were involved?"

  "I'd say that you were a bad liar, and to be perfectly honest I'd be rather offended that you insulted my intelligence in such a manner."

  "What if they were big diamonds? The size of honey baked hams?"

  I raised my hand as if I were in a classroom. "Can I say something here?"

  "Go ahead," said Vlad.

  "We're in a residential area, and you've been shooting this place up for the past few minutes.

  Instead of worrying about us, shouldn't you be fleeing the scene before the cops arrive?"

  "Why would I want to do that?"

  "Ummmm...you know...getting arrested...going to jail...dropping the soap..."

  Vlad laughed. "Don't worry. We have the situation well under control. And now, Harry McGlade, I'm afraid your time has come."

  Harry stared at the barrel of the shotgun. "Go ahead and kill me. But I beg you—let Andrew Mormon go. He’s innocent."

  "No one is innocent."

  "You’re right. Kill him first."

  "Hey!" I started to say, but my protest was drowned out by the much louder cry of "Stop!

  Don't kill him!"

  A girl pushed past Vlad and stepped between the shotgun and Harry. She looked about sixteen, was dressed entirely in black, and had enough metal in her face to be part cyborg.

  Harry and Vlad both spoke at the same time: "Tanya...?"

  Chapter 8

  Harry

  If life were indeed like a box of chocolates, this evening had been one craptastic bitter orange jelly after another. You know the one—it looks deceptively like a chocolate cream or a truffle, but when you bite into it tastes like someone wiped an orange peel in an ashtray and then loogied on it and encased it in rubber. Those candies suck ass. Why even make those nasty things in the first place? Is anyone even listening to me?

  Where was I? Oh yeah. Staring death in the face, again.

  I was about to take the shotgun away from Vlad and introduce it into his unhappy place when Tanya exploded into the room and threw herself at me.

  "We can’t kill him! He’s the One!" she yelled. Or something like that. I was still thinking about chocolates.